1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a list display device, and more particularly, to a list display device suitable for displaying an operation list or the like for equipment such as a navigation system, audio equipment, an air conditioner, or the like, which is mounted on a motor vehicle such as an automobile and so forth.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, such an art is known that allows selection of a desired item from a list, which is displayed on a liquid crystal display screen, for example, an address book of a mobile phone, a destination list of a navigation system, or the like, to display the desired item on the liquid crystal display screen using an operating means such as a jog dial, a joy stick, or the like. Such the prior art is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-175139.
In the prior art, there is provided a cubed menu displayed as a virtual image in three dimensions on a menu screen. Displaying menus by rotating circularly, the cubed menu make a user feel as if the user rotates the jog dial, so that the user can visually recognize changes between a plurality of menus on the cubed menu, whereby user-friendliness of the menu is improved.
Meanwhile, in addition to the above prior art, another conventional art is also known as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-111839 that displays item names of a list by listing in a vertical or a horizontal direction on a display screen in which such a technique is generally employed that provides indicators on a top side and a bottom side, or a right side and a left side of the list when scrolling the list in the virtual or the horizontal direction.
However, in the former case of the above-mentioned prior art, all of the items are displayed on the display screen, so that when each item has a character or the like assigned, there are many characters to be displayed to thereby cause the user difficulty in viewing item names in the case of a small display screen. In addition, in response to a rotation input operation via a rotation operation element, every item is moved circularly to thereby require an overall update of the display screen at the time of displaying, causing heavy loading on a processing unit of the displaying means. In particular, an entire update of the display screen is not desirable when driving an automobile due to troublesome display.
Also, in the latter case of the above-mentioned prior art, many characters are listed on the display screen, whereby the user loses a point of regard, thus not being suitable for use in the automobile or the like. Specifically, it is impossible to read characters in a moment while driving, so that when there are lots of items all over the display screen, eyeshot runs all over the display screen. As a result, the driver unintentionally reads through characters all over the display screen, so that safety may be impaired while driving the automobile. Besides, due to a small indicator area provided therein, there is another problem of poor visibility.